Vinay Menon: The Rock just confessed to theft and it’s as sweet as the Snickers he stole

You know an actor is beloved when he gets kudos after confessing a crime.

Let’s pull a “Dateline” and start at the beginning, which is inside a 7-Eleven in Hawaii. It’s 1986. Dwayne Johnson is a 14-year-old with bulging biceps, bodybuilding dreams and the instincts of a juvenile delinquent with a sweet tooth.

I’m assuming there is a statute of limitations on candy bar theft. Because 36 years later, The Rock has come clean and, as he puts it, finally “exorcised this damn chocolate demon that’s been gnawing at me for decades.”

Some celebrities steal jewelry or designer fashions.

Young Dwayne was tempted by nougat, caramel and peanuts.

As he wrote this week on Instagram: “I was broke as hell, so I used to steal a king sized @snickers EVERY DAY from 7-11 for almost a year when I was 14yrs old, on my way to the gym. The Snickers was my pre daily workout. The same clerk was there every day and always just turned her head and never busted me.”

There’s a lot to unwrap here.

Young Dwayne was working out every day when he was 14? No wonder his neck is now thicker than my waist. But if he could afford a gym membership, why the five-finger discount down the street? Why not quit the gym and do chin-ups on a Koa tree to avoid looting poor 7-Eleven? As for the clerk looking away, I’d do the same thing in the presence of a teen behemoth capable of palming the top of my skull with one hand and cracking it open like a walnut.

But here’s why The Rock is so beloved. Here’s why this grinning hulk of an action hero is impossible to dislike. Instead of just offering a chocolate confessional on social media, he tried to retroactively “right this wrong” in real life.

Guilt-ridden and possibly with free time, he returned to that 7-Eleven this week, marched inside like one of those walking trees from “Lord of the Rings” and bought every Snickers in sight. He left this sugary bounty at the front counter and instructed the clerks to give one to anyone who might look like a young thief.

It was a “pay it forward” as reimagined by a repentant Jesse James.

The Rock also picked up the tabs for all the star-struck customers inside.

“I always knew I needed to go in and clean out every Snickers bar they had — the right way,” he wrote. “And as a bonus it was a lot of fun to take care of everybody who walked into 7-11 while I was there. Least I could do considering all the sh- I used to steal from here …”

Mahalo! Big Gulps for all my law-abiding friends!

I’m confused as to why Young Dwayne, who is hard-wired with worker bee impulses, didn’t find a job to earn a few bucks. I could afford my Snickers as a kid because I delivered this great paper seven days a week. I wasn’t bodybuilding. As an old man now, is it hard to open a jar of pickles? Sure. But my conscience is clear. I never swiped Hershey’s from Mac’s or Becker’s.

Actually, scratch this past-tense advice. I just had a vision of Young Dwayne rolling up and delivering thick Saturday papers, hurling them from the sidewalk with ballistic projectile force and shattering every window in his sleepy hood.

Maybe it’s good that he stole. Nobody got hurt and nothing was broken.

But what’s odd is, 36 years later, this Snickers larceny still weighs on his superstar psyche. This guy has toyed with a presidential run while haunted by empty calorie nightmares? Maybe he realizes he was one milk chocolate arrest away from a different fate. Teen crime can derail a life. Sometimes it doesn’t get back on track. What a tragedy if, instead of making blockbuster movies, The Rock was now bench-pressing in the slammer where other inmates called him The Bonbon.

It’s the coming clean that’s refreshing. Celebrities are like the rest of us in one way: talking about theft is strictly taboo. I don’t see Winona Ryder returning to Saks Fifth Avenue in Beverly Hills to buy strangers cashmere goods to atone for her infamous shoplifting incident in 2001. I would love to learn more about the time Megan Fox was busted for stealing Olsen cosmetics as a teen. According to the Daily Express, she was banned from Walmart and sentenced to wrapping Christmas presents, a punishment this cute criminal found “awesome.”

I look forward to the day I can ridicule The Rock. Today is not that day.

He just confessed to a 365-day Snickers crime spree and is as lovable as ever. As he wrote: “We can’t change the past and some of the dumb stuff we may have done, but every once in a while we can add a little redeeming grace note to that situation — and maybe put a big smile on some stranger’s faces.”

I want to high-five you, Dwayne Johnson.

And ask for your assistance in opening this jar of pickles.

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